Allview P5 Mini Review: Cute, Compact, But Does it do the Trick?

Here we are with a handset that costs less than $200, dubbed the Allview P5 Mini. We reviewed this model last month and we’re here with more details now. The affordable device is on the lower end of the spectrum and it was launched in November, only now reaching us for testing purposes. Meet the Allview P5 Mini:

This is a dual SIM budget phone with a 3.95 inch diagonal and a design that may feel like a combo between a HTC model and an Alcatel device. The handset incorporates comfortable side physical buttons, capacitive buttons below the display and a texture just like rubber at the back. We’re dealing with a pretty bulky unit, that measures 11.2 mm in thickness and weighs 162.2 grams, so once again massive.

Allview P5 Mini features a TFT LCD 3.95 inch display, with a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels, Gorilla Glass protection and a Cortex A9 1 GHz single core CPU (Mediatek MT6575). Also on board there’s a PowerVR SGX 531 GPU, 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of storage, of which 2 GB accessible to the user and a microSD card slot. On the connectivity side we’ve got WiFi, DLNA, Bluetooth 3.0 and microUSB.

Finally, at the back of the phone there’s a 3.2 MP camera with 480p 30 fps video capture and at the front a 0.3 MP shooter as well. Allview P5 Mini also brings GPS, FM radio with RDS and a Yamaha audio amplifier. Its battery is a Li-Ion 1700 mAh unit, that should provide 300 minutes of talk time. In our tests, this model provided 5 hours of continuous playback.

On the audio side, the device has slight distorsion issues when you listen to music on the loudest setting. Other than that the headphones bundled with it are pretty good and the Yamaha amplifier generates loud volume and good quality of the sound. On the video side, we’ve got a maximum FWVGA playback and the view angles are rather poor.

The camera is not even worth mentioning, being average. In the benchmark area, we scored 2703 points in Quadrant, 5988 points in AnTuTu and 33.6 FPS in NenaMark 2. The device runs Android 4.0.4 ICS and has a reasonably decent browser, plus a comfy virtual keyboard. We get the usual suite of Google Maps, Play Store and even some custom themes offered by Allview on board, as well as an antivirus: Bitdefender Mobile Security.

And now the Pros regarding the phone:

good price

solid design

OK brightness

good battery

good audio volume

bundled games

And the Cons:

bad camera, no flash

bad viewing angles

bulky phone

low resolution

bad sunlight behaviour of display

Overall, we give this phone an 8.5 out of 10 for design, 7 for hardware and 7.83 as the final grade. The price tag of less than $200 may be the most appealing thing about this phone…